How to Know if You’re Working With a Good Adoption Agency

You’ve selected your agency, you’ve done your home study, and now you’re waiting. You begin to wonder whether you made the right choice and are working with a quality agency, or whether you should start looking elsewhere. Never fear! Working with an adoption agency can be a great experience!

1. The agency provides good education on a variety of topics during the home study process, including transracial adoption and navigating an open adoption relationship.

2. They’re very transparent about fees: when money is due, what it’s used for, and what will happen if your match doesn’t end in placement.

3. The agency keeps statistics on matches and placement and is open about those.

4. They speak well of expectant and birth parents, as opposed to stereotyping them.

5. The agency is honest with both their hopeful adoptive families and their expectant parents.

6. Your social worker maintains the level of communication promised to you when you started working with them. Some agencies will hold your hand through the wait and check in with you regularly. Others prefer not to communicate until an expectant parent has expressed interest in your profile. There’s no one right way, but they should deliver on the expectations they have set.

7. The agency provides or facilitates post-placement services for hopeful or adoptive families. For example, an agency might host a once-a-year potluck for birth parents and adoptive parents to get together. Or they may have a monthly support group for adoptive parents.

8. There are services provided for birth parents post-placement.

9. Your social worker is responsive. They may not communicate a lot, but if you have a question or a pressing need, they get back to you quickly with an answer.

10. They are well-versed in the adoption laws for the state(s) in which they operate.

Are there points you would add to this list about working with an adoption agency? Let us know in the comments!